


The Product (finalized)

by CoatTheBoneless



Series: The Product [2]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoatTheBoneless/pseuds/CoatTheBoneless
Summary: The final version of my creative writing class project.





	The Product (finalized)

 

Cooper looked out across the factory from his perch up on the catwalk, his eyes scanning across the rows of machines. He watched the factory work, everything in perfect harmony. First Cooper heard the swarm of clicks, like a thousand typewriters chattering away. Then a wash of warmth and the soft whirring of an army of computerized minds thinking. He took a deep breath in as the third and last sound, a wet crunch, echoed a hundred times around the room. He held it in for a moment, letting the scent of metal and oil seep into his lungs. And he let it out again.

“I love my job,” he said to himself.

And why shouldn’t he? He hardly ever had to actually work, and when he did it was engaging and fulfilling. He was paid decently, considering the times. He had no real boss nagging him, no coworkers annoying him. He could spend all day up there on the catwalk, in a sort of meditative state, the smell of the working machines filling his nose.

A brief siren sounded and Cooper woke from his daydream, zeroing in on the source. He strode over to the stairs and down onto the factory floor. following a red light over to one machine. He opened up a panel on the side, and stuck the front half of his body into its interior.

One thing that Cooper missed about not having any coworkers was that he had no one to joke with. There weren’t any water coolers to lean next to, or cubicle neighbors he could chat with. It was times like these that Cooper found himself wishing to have someone to talk to. He’d make little jokes as he worked on the repairs. Something witty. Sarcastic, but also dark. Something like “seems to me these machines are the only things with heart left!” He whispered it under his breath as he sautered a wire. He’d have to work on it.

At this point, he was supposed to look deeper into the machine, to see if anything had happened to the Product. And if something had, he was supposed to press the big blue button on the outside. He closed the panel again, screwed it back in place, and hit the button.

And now, Cooper knew, a light would come on in Mary’s office. A short, sharp alarm would sound. She would get up from her usual tasks, coding or designing implants, and haul herself down here to deal with things that were gruesome and difficult, and not his business. By the time she arrived he would be gone, losing himself amongst the labyrinth of steel. She would have no way of calling him, other than simply raising her voice. And this factory was awfully loud.

Let her deal with the failed Products. It was the only useful thing she did around here anyways.

She would open a hatch on the machine and haul the limp Product out onto the floor. She would examine it, assessing whether or not it was worth keeping. She would poke and prod at plates and wires, measuring them to see if they had been implanted correctly. She would deal with them accordingly. Then she would return to her office to, presumably, wait for the next alarm. Then the assembly line would return to work, now off sync with the others in the factory. It would annoy him for the rest of the day, like a piece of popcorn stuck in his teeth.

A second alarm sounded right next to him, making him flinch. Another machine had broken, the one just to his right. He gave a small sigh.

“What can you do?” he muttered to himself, as he took off the side panel and climbed inside this second machine. It was an easy fix, just an adjustment to the target-recognition camera. But the real problem wasn’t the machine itself. The problem was Mary. She was already down on the factory floor, and the blue alarm only went off in her office. She would go all the way back up to her office before she would see the second alarm, if she noticed it at all with just the light and not the accompanying sound. If the line were stopped for too long, the company algorithm might not take kindly to it and dock them both pay. There wasn’t really much of an option. Cooper would have to look the Product over himself.

He was trained to do so of course. The company didn’t leave anything to chance. It just wasn’t his specialty, and he hated to do it. Seeing the Products out on the street on his daily commute already made his skin crawl. Their cybernetic parts would sometimes stick out at odd angles and would often make their joints look twisted and broken beneath whatever uniform they were given. Their shirts would sag over the fist-sized hole in the center of their chest. Even if they had fancier sub-skin implants, you could always tell by the way they moved, their exaggerated and jerky movements were more robotic than human. That, and the smiles they always seemed to have. Those ear-to-ear, bleach-white grins. The Products that didn’t turn out right were often much worse. Cooper grimaced, then opened the latch.

Inside lay the Product. The chamber it was housed in looked a lot like air vents that heroes would crawl through in the movies. A swarm of thin mechanical arms had surrounded its form, some frozen in the act of cutting, stitching, or piercing. The Product was all but complete, and would’ve been merrily on its way had the machine broken down a second later. The occipital implants, the final step, had even been installed. But Cooper could see that everything was a bit off. It made sense, with the targeting system slipping out of calibration. Each plate, each stitch, and each wire were just slightly crooked, out of place.

But the worst was the eyes.

It seemed that the targeting had slipped not all at once, but gradually. Cooper guessed that each mistake, each missed stitch, had knocked off the targeting little by little. By the time the occipital implants had been installed, the calibration had been off enough to clip through the bone of the eye sockets, shattering it and also probably throwing off the wires that were supposed to self-install in the Product’s brain. Who knew what the Product would be like now? It was impossible to tell without a CAT scan and a neurological expert sent in from Seoul, and that would be a colossal waste of resources for a single Product. He called for an automated transport, and set to work removing the spindly mechanical arms from its body. He had finished by the time it arrived. He grabbed the Product by the shoulders and hauled it up into the bed of the vehicle. Before he could punch in the option for “recycler”, he heard Mary’s voice behind him.

“You really enjoy this, huh?”

Cooper turned, surprised.

“Did you give him the once-over?” She asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

She raised an eyebrow, frowning. “Let me see him.”

He stepped aside and motioned broadly towards the self-driving vehicle. “By all means.”

Still scowling, she climbed up into the bed, and as she passed Cooper got a whiff of her breath. She’d been drinking.

She took several minutes staring at the Product, and then set to poking and prodding it. She shoved it up on its side to look at its back. She opened its mouth and peered inside. She gently brushed the ruined landscape of the right side of its face. Finally, she stood.

“He’s salvageable. He won’t be able to do what he was supposed to, but he can still be useful.” She nudged his right arm. “He was given heavy lifting upgrades, and I can see why. He was already very fit. He won’t need those fancy head wires as much if he’s just gonna be hauling stuff around.”

She gestured at the Product, taking it all in. “Some of the implants hit bone and if they didn’t break going in, they’ll break coming out. So a lot of him isn’t recyclable anyways.”

“It’ll be unpredictable. We don’t know what happened in its head.”

“What, you think the wires install themselves without their own basic guidance system? It's far from perfect but it's close enough. And besides, we won’t give him to the general public. We can make him useful here.”

“What will Seoul say?”

“If they notice at all, they’ll commend us for our efficiency. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of the paperwork.”

Cooper paused for a moment. He hadn’t expected that. Mary never volunteered to do anything, let alone paperwork. Hiding his surprise, he crossed his arms. “Fine.”

Cooper thought he saw a smirk tug at the corner of her lip. “Just give me a moment to boot him up.”

She poked a sensor in the small of the Product’s back and it spasmed for a moment before lying still again. The lenses of its eyes focused, and it sat up slowly and stiffly. It turned to look at them both. Cooper stifled a comment about a ‘piercing gaze’. The skin around the eye implants was still wet and red, and joking about eye-spikes made even him uncomfortable.

Mary leaned in and pressed a second sensor, this time at the base of the Product’s neck. She leaned in close and spoke slowly and clearly.

“You will assist this man, Cooper Hill, in his work.” She said. Cooper tried to protest but was quickly cut off with a raised finger. “You will do everything he asks.”

She fixed him with an intense stare. “Don’t you need the help? The automated transports can be frustrating to handle, and you can’t carry some of the larger parts yourself.”

Cooper returned her long look. This woman stayed up in one room all day, doing nothing but drink. And now she was landing him with this grotesque… failure. It drove him speechless.

“I’ll leave you to it.” She said, then she turned and walked back towards the stairs up to her office.

Once Mary was out of sight, Cooper turned to his new assistant. He looked it up and down once more.

“Let’s take you out for a test drive,” he said, mostly to himself.

Cooper spent the rest of his shift ordering the Product around. Even if there was nothing to do, he’d still have it run laps around the factory or lift heavy spare parts. Watching the thing jerk into action at his every whim brought a grin to his face, even if it was programmed to do so. Cooper had to admit, Mary had been right about one thing. This Product was strong. It just might be useful after all.

But even before the shift was over, Cooper noticed a glitch in the Product’s behavior. It would forget steps in complicated tasks. It seemed to focus elsewhere during lengthy commands. It never sat still, even if it had no commands it would twitch and fidget as if it were nervous. But these were small problems, problems that could be weeded out. He’d found a shock-prod in storage and would give the Product jolts every time it fell out of line. He almost found it more entertaining than his usual meditative watch from the catwalk. The shift passed quickly after that.

The next morning, Cooper didn’t find the Product where he’d left it shut down. After a few minutes of searching, he found it in one of the storage areas in back, kept warm in order to preserve organic chemicals. “How the hell did you get in here?” He asked, mostly to himself as he thumbed the ‘on’ sensor and watched its blank eyes focus. He’d have to get Mary to check the security camera footage.

After clocking in, Cooper didn’t feel like messing with the Product that morning. Like a new toy, the Product had seemed interesting when he’d first got it, but he still preferred his solitude. He told it to stand idly on the factory floor and follow any loud noises or red lights it saw. Then he went back up to his familiar spot and returned to his calm watch over the machines.

His thoughts today were about Mary. While she had never seemed to be the friendliest person, she had been particularly antagonistic yesterday. She had never backed him into a corner like that before or intruded into his workspace, though to be fair they didn’t interact much. Perhaps it was the alcohol, or she was frustrated with her own work, or it maybe she had children that were making her irritable. He had no way to tell.

As Cooper was pondering this he saw movement down on the floor; the Product was wandering among the machines, looking at them with what seemed like an approximation of curiosity. He sighed. Whatever was eating at Mary, he was stuck with the consequences. She’d undoubtedly done all the paperwork and put this failed Product into the system. Trying to get rid of it now would be destroying company property. He trudged down the spiral staircase to fetch the shock-prod and get the thing back in line.

But he couldn’t find it. He looked through the storage rooms, scoured the factory floor, searched all the railings up above. It was nowhere to be found, as if it had been swallowed up by the factory itself. The assembly lines clattered around him as he turned a corner and ran directly into the Product. A dozen cold metal implants poked into his ribs and the rim of an empty chest hit his cheek as he bounced off the thing and landed square on his ass.

“Damn it, watch where you’re going,” he groaned as he climbed back up onto his feet. The Product stared back, unblinking. “Stupid hunk of junk. Help me look for the shock-prod.” The thing’s face twitched. It didn’t move. Was that a grimace?

Cooper spoke to the Product again, loudly and slowly. “Get. Me. The. Shock. Prod.”

That seemed to get through. It turned in place and began to march away, scanning in front of it as it went. Cooper was beginning to think that Mary had the right idea. Dealing with this tech all day while buzzed must be so much more tolerable.

Cooper was about to turn away and return to the catwalk when he saw the Product coming back towards him. It wasn’t holding the shock-prod. Instead, in its big meaty hand was a PVC pipe about the same length.

And in that moment, Cooper came to a decision. Seoul would just have to deal with one less ruined, useless worker.

“Follow me.” He told the Product. It dutifully fell into step behind him. He led it to the front of the factory, where the loading area, recycler, and incinerator were. Cooper pointed at the conveyor belt that led into the incinerator. “Lie there.”

But the Product didn’t move. It seemed to be looking somewhere else, as if it were a six-foot-tall child unable to pay attention to a school lesson. Cooper reached up, snapping his fingers a few times in front of its face. “Hello? Anybody home? Don’t break until you’re already on there, I really don’t want to have to haul you around.”

But it just kept staring. When it tilted its head slightly, again in an imitation of curiosity, Cooper came to the sudden realization that the Product wasn’t just staring off into space. It was staring at the Products-to-be. The sedated bodies of people of all shapes and sizes, moving slowly but steadily out of a large, self-driving 18-wheeler and into the factory. Cooper groaned and grabbed for the Product’s shoulder. But before he could touch it, he felt a clammy hand suddenly clamp around his forearm. Cooper jolted, and looked up at the Product. It was still staring at the sedated bodies, but had raised its hand to seize Cooper’s wrist. The beginnings of fear began to flood Cooper’s chest as he tried to pull himself away, but the grip wouldn’t budge. It was like a steel python had wrapped itself around him and was refusing to let go.

And then the Product began to drag him.

Cooper’s panic flooded his system with adrenaline, and he was just about to wrench himself free when he felt a second hand grip his hair. Cooper began to scream as one of the bodies in line was released, shoved away, and replaced with his own. He felt more icy clamps around his forehead, his wrists, his waist, his feet. _I can still get free,_ he thought. _These weren’t designed to hold struggling people, just to hold limp bodies steady!_ But while he did feel his bonds loosening he couldn’t possibly break out fast enough before he entered the first stages of the machine.

Up in her office, Mary eyed the shock-prod leaning up beside her door as the screams began to drown out the rest of the factory’s noise. She took the first swig out of the bottle on her desk, as the factory’s chattering began beneath the louder, more shrill noise. Then the whirr and warmth of computers thinking. Then the final, wet crunch, and all was silent.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/coat-the-boneless)  
> an interesting thing I noticed while editing this was that this is kind of like a reverse Cask of Amontillado, where the story is told from the point of view of the oblivious asshole and eventual victim instead of from the view of the murderer.


End file.
